


Sometimes It Takes The Right Hand

by lindsey_grissom



Series: Closest Thing To Family [2]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-04
Updated: 2009-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-10 13:48:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindsey_grissom/pseuds/lindsey_grissom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She's alone and lucky.  She had so few to lose...</i>  Second in a series of Laura-Billy friendship one-shots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes It Takes The Right Hand

**_President. Cylons. Cancer. Thousands of humans left. Cylons. Cancer. Only thousands. President. Cylons. Cancer. Cylons. Cancer. Cancer. Cancer._** **Billy**.

She makes herself look at him. Turns her eyes, her head, her body. _(her mind)_ She makes him the focus and stares until she sees him through the thoughts. _(nightmares. memories)_ She focuses on the sway of his hair in the circulating air. The movement of his lips as he follows the report. Filling the air with voiceless words. She doesn't look at his eyes because they're red and that means Cylons. _(cylons)_ She keeps to the things of yesterday. Before she was dying. Before they were dead.

She looks at his tie and remembers him straightening it compulsively, before...Before. She looks at the suit and knows it's new, which is good. It has to last. _(don't think)_

She follows a trail of thread down his sleeve finding his hand and hers. Clinging. Too desperate an action. Too much like holding on to be anything else. She can't remember how she got into it. Can't remember why it should matter.

He has the beginnings of a list. Not of the dead. Of the cities and the worlds. The homes blown apart. It's too early to think of the families inside.

It had shaken. She remembers suddenly enough to jerk in her seat. His hand had shaken, trembled when he added his family to the list they aren't making. That's why she grabbed him. Her steady Billy had faltered and she had been scared to lose him. So scared. _(no more)_ Two hands clinging and he was back.

She feels his eyes on her and he wants to ask. She hasn't told him much. Hasn't had time. He's been her assistant for three days. Secretary for Education. President of the Twelve Colonies. _(thousands, only thousands)_

She knows what kind of student he was. How lucky she was to get him. She knows he was born Billy, not William. It seemed enough, before.

He knows her name. Knows more about her political career than she remembers. Doesn't know of her family, _(long gone)_ of Richard _(president Adar, former)_ She's alone and lucky. She had so few to lose.

But there was 42. Lovers. Friends. _(associates)_ 42 people before her. She's been there since the political beginning. She was never meant for this.

42\. She can name them, every one. So can Billy, but he's good at lists. She knows them. _(knew)_ She danced with 25. Drank with 36. Slept with 3. Her system taught their children. For what?

Billy's hand clenches. She trembles before she can stop. Before she can take a deep breath. It hurts but gives out strength. She draws it out from her growing weakness. Anger. At the Cylons. At Richard. At the Cancer. _(at herself)_

Her eyes have betrayed her. Let her see what was. She closes them, opens her ears. She listens to Billy breathe. Listens to the scratch of his pen. The rustle of his shirt, jacket, tie. She draws it all close until she almost can't hear the dead screams in her heart.

 

**End.**


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